Historical Firestone post office artifacts survive Boulder flood

Post office boxes, service windows return to town after more than 40 years

By Scott RochatLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
09/29/2013 08:59:00 PM MDT

Updated:
09/30/2013 12:16:59 PM MDT

FIRESTONE -- An offer to return the trappings of the old Firestone post office almost got lost in the mail.

Back in February, Erie resident Joe Bertron wrote the town with an offer. His mother, Clemmie, had been Firestone's postmistress for 31 years and kept the old post office boxes, money order window and mail window after operations switched to a new location. Would Firestone like them back?

He got an excited "yes." But not for about six months. The letter, oddly enough, had slipped out of sight after reaching Town Hall.

"It had fallen behind the filing cabinet," Bertron said. "They didn't find it until they were getting ready to put in new carpeting."

Joe Bertron, whose mother, Clemmie Bertron, was Firestone's postmaster for 30 years, donated post boxes and other memorabilia dating back to 1907 to the town. He also is giving the town a copy of a relative s memoir about mining.
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LEWIS GEYER
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"It was meant to be," chuckled Trustee Paul Sorensen, a member of the Carbon Valley Historical Society. After a call back by Sorensen, discussions, and a short flood-related delay, the pieces finally returned to Firestone last week.

The wood, brass and pebbled-glass furnishings date back to the original post office built in 1907, before Firestone was incorporated. It's the first time they've been back in the town since 1969.

"I've always wanted to give them back to the town," said Bertron. "Being 100 years old, you don't just toss that into the dump."

The items had been in storage at a Boulder home that was recently sold and is due to change hands Tuesday. The furnishings had been scheduled to be moved on the day of the flood; the disaster forced a 12-day delay, but did not damage the post office pieces.

When Bertron's mother first became postmaster in 1938, Firestone was still a "fly through" mail stop for trains, hastily dropping off the post -- sometimes with unfortunate consequences.

"At Christmas time, in parcel post, there'd be a lot of glass and it would break," Bertron said. "There'd be a lot of complaints."

So how did his mom wind up keeping the post boxes? Well, they were technically hers. The tradition at the time was that each new postmaster paid the previous one $100 for the boxes. When she retired, the old boxes weren't needed and stayed with her.

The frame of the postmaster s window, which might date back to 1907, sports this label. The post office equipment that was donated to Firestone last week is older than the town itself.
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LEWIS GEYER
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"Maybe it would be appropriate if the town gave you $100," Sorensen said to Bertron with a chuckle. "You could frame it and put it on the wall."

The town currently has the furnishings in storage until a permanent location can be settled on.

"They're smaller than I thought they would be, which is a good thing," Sorensen said. "We should be able to find some cases for them." Not only is the donation welcome, Sorensen said, but it might encourage others to step forward with their own bits of history.

"I'm hoping once people know about this, they'll say 'Oh, I've got this sitting in my closet that used to belong to so-and-so that the town might be interested in having,'" he said "I'm sure there must be plenty of coal miner lunch buckets, hats ... I'd love to get anything and everything that people might have."

As it turned out, Bertron himself wasn't done yet. While giving an interview for a DVD history of the town, Bertron mentioned that he also had an unpublished memoir of a Firestone coal miner named Albert Monseau -- 958 handwritten pages, filling each page from end to end without a margin.

"I've got 500 pages left to read," he said.

A cousin gave a copy of the manuscript to Bertron about six or seven years ago. He agreed to make a fresh copy for the town.

Monseau was the stepson of Bertron's great-great-uncle Pete Popineau, Firestone's first occupant; Popineau lived in the town until his death in 1943. Much of the manuscript deals with Monseau's experiences in the mine, and sometimes its dangers as well.

"They'd get into a place where they heard the timber cracking and have to move out all the equipment," Bertron said. "And if you could salvage the coal, you were lucky, because you only got paid for the coal that you loaded."

Firestone Trustee Paul Sorensen, who also belongs to the Carbon Valley Historical Society, measures on Tuesday a cabinet of former Firestone post office mailboxes used until 1969. The historic post office equipment will be temporarily stored in the public works building.
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LEWIS GEYER
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